## Story 1 ![bg0130138.png](/uploads/bg0130138_8f9eb98193.png) Once, there was a pair of beautiful sisters who lived in the woods.
They supported one another after the death of their parents,
and spent their days in happiness and peace.
The younger lived for the elder, and the elder for the younger.
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A town burns with the crimson fires of war.
The woman marches through the flames in search of her younger sister.
Each step causes her body—which is half-machine—to shudder with pain.
The kingdom wars to make the world its own.
When they capture citizens from opposing countries,
they modify their bodies into mechanized weapons of slaughter
they then use to feed their own endless ambitions.
The sisters were made fodder for a process called "the sorting."
The elder proved more compatible,
and has now obtained great power from the machinery grafted onto her body.
Her sister, however⁠...
"HEE HEE! KILL! KILL! I WANT TO KIIIIIILL!"
Unable to withstand such cruel experimentation,
the girl's mind shattered, leaving behind a weapon
that indiscriminately killed everything in sight.
"Bah! A despicable failure!"
Eventually, the blade of a kingdom soldier ended
the girl's experiment—and her life.
This is how the kingdom took everything from the elder sister.
Her home. Her forest. ...Her family.
After barely escaping with her life, the woman managed to drag herself back to the
charred remains of her home, where she secreted herself away to mourn.
So much time has passed since that day.
Seeking revenge on the kingdom, she hones her power,
hunting their soldiers everywhere they can be found.
Any small moment of respite in this bloody life is filled with thoughts of the sister she has lost.
The face in her memory does not smile. Nor does she cry.
She only lies in a pool of her own blood as a town burns,
passing from this life in endless moments of horrific agony.
The woman could do nothing that day save escape;
even her sister's body was left behind.
And while she doubts the body is still there, the thought of it consumes her.
She deserves a funeral. A proper burial. I can at least do that much for her.
And so, she decides to return to that dreadful place once more.
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A solemn air hangs over the town.
Traces of battle are everywhere.
With the citizens all dead or fled, the kingdom now uses it as a military base.
Soldiers swagger about. Rotting bodies lie motionless in dark corners.
The woman leaves no trace as she ventures through the town's gruesome battle scars.
Her objective is the place where her sister lost her life.
Though her body is likely gone, she hopes to find at least one memento of her.
She makes her way slowly, avoiding patrols, until arriving at her destination.
Until this point, the town has been exactly as she remembered it. But then...
"...No. Oh no."
In that moment, panic becomes her world.
Before her is a sight that does not match her memories.
What was once the ruins of regular civilian homes is now a pure
white structure seemingly hewn from a single piece of material.
And it sits precisely on the spot where her sister's body fell.
It is as though a tower from an alien civilization
has suddenly sprouted on the site of her tragedy.
The structure's streamlined walls make it the most awe-inspiring thing
she has ever seen. It is a foreign sight in this place—a single
moment of beauty amidst a world of death.
With great caution, she glances around.
She spies two soldiers emerging from what looks to be a crevice in the building.
An entrance.
Without a second thought, she begins to follow, straining to overhear their words.
"Analysis of...corpse...well. Best case...kingdom's
military strength will...leaps and bounds..."
Their words are a horror. If the kingdom was to find
more power, the fires of war would only spread.
The woman would do anything to stop that.
But what worries her more is the word "corpse."
Perhaps it is no coincidence this facility sits atop
many corpses—including her sister's.
As she watches the two soldiers depart, she considers her next move.
Sneaking inside the structure would be a massive risk.
And yet, the soldiers mentioned a corpse.
She cannot ignore this possibility.
So she steels her resolve and makes her way
into the dim interior of the amazing building. ## Story 2 ![bg0130141.png](/uploads/bg0130141_48af45d8b3.png) A terrible human experimentation known as "the sorting"
has turned prisoners into modified killing machines.
The woman, a survivor of the sorting, harbors one sole regret:
She abandoned the corpse of her sister in a town consumed by the fires of war.
The woman now finds herself back in the place where her sister fell,
hoping to reclaim her so she might offer up a proper burial.
Yet when she reaches her sister's resting place, she encounters a bizarre building.
A building she now makes her way through.
The inside is cluttered with complicated dials and gauges.
It is clearly some manner of research facility.
But what kind of research, exactly? the woman wonders.
The corpse.
The words of the kingdom soldier replay in her mind.
She knows not what sort of corpse it is, but thinking of it creates an odd buzz in her chest.
She avoids the watchful gaze of kingdom soldiers as she ventures into the deepest part of the building.
At the end, she discovers a long, narrow room that stretches so far away she cannot see the end.
While the room is too dark to make anything out clearly,
she notes that numerous tall structures line either side.
She examines one of the structures and sees it is a water tank with a small window on the front.
Inside is a woman, sleeping as though in a cradle.
Half of her is covered in machinery; she has been sorted.
Dull, silver limbs glint in dim light as the body gently sloshes back and forth in the tank.
This is impossible.... There's so many.
Each tank contains a person who has been subjected to the sorting.
Most are children⁠ not much older than her sister.
And though the woman knows it would be wise to leave them be,
her hand drifts to the tank of its own accord.
She grasps the handle on the tank door, but not even the power of her prosthetic arm can budge it.
As she searches high and low for some other way to open it, a new thought crosses her mind:
Wait. Are they...dead?
Each of the sorted bears what appears to be a fatal wound.
The wounds are so deep—so horrendous—it is doubtful the
bearers could live even with mechanical bodies.
Extracting them from the tanks may not save them.
As the woman considers this, a loud, sudden beep rings out.
The tanks begins to glow a bright red, flooding the room with color.
Understanding this to be an emergency, the woman hides herself in the shadows.
Either she has been discovered, or something is wrong in the facility.
Her eyes scan the room with great caution when she suddenly hears something:
"Help me..."
It is an impossible voice.
One that should have been lost after going through sorting and being abandoned in this burning town.
No. You're losing it. This isn't happening.
And yet, the woman leaves her hiding place and moves toward the voice's siren call.
The tank in the center of the room glows brighter than the rest.
The woman still sees flashes of her sister whenever she closes her eyes. But now they are open.
And yet, her beloved sister—looking just as she did on her final day—is suspended within the tank.
"Help me..."
The girl's pleading words emerge from an acoustic device fitted on the tank.
Dazed, the woman begins to speak.
"I thought...you died."
The sister's voice is faint. She speaks slowly. But it is her.
"Heya, Sis... I knew...you'd come for me..."
This is enemy territory.
The woman must be alert—must doubt everything she sees and hears.
Yet her sister's voice punches vast holes in her usually unshakable guard.
Why is she alive? Why is she being held here?
As if answering these questions, the girl begins to speak.
Those who failed the sorting have been gathered here
for further experiments of almost unfathomable cruelty.
They are abused. Tortured. Mutilated. Treated no better than a rat in a cage.
All so the kingdom might have the soldiers it so greedily desires.
And now, her sister is set to go through a process called a "soul transfer."
Some people had their bodies broken by the sorting. Others, their spirits.
Though each of these cases are considered failures,
the kingdom believes there might be a way to match a compatible
body with another compatible soul.
The kingdom does not treat these people as such. Rather,
they intend to dismantle their bodies and souls and rearrange them to their own liking.
It is a horror.
"They're trying to brainwash me," continues the girl. "And once
I'm completely loyal to the kingdom, they'll put my soul in someone else's body."
The thought creates such fury in the woman that she begins to tremble.
"It's all right," she says. "I'm going to get you out of there."
If the door to the tank will not open, she will simply destroy it.
She takes weapon in hand and prepares to strike, but then...
"Thanks, Sis... Now I can finally rest..."
The woman freezes. She pries into the meaning behind her sister's
ominous words while the younger girl waits quietly. No fear. No sadness. Simply a moment in time.
Her sister is being kept alive by a combination of mechanical parts and the tank.
If she is removed, she will not live out the day.
Anger and sadness overwhelms the woman as she bites into her lip.
To finally be reunited only to be torn away again is a fate beyond words.
And yet, she cannot give up. Her sister is here.
She is right here—and the woman would give everything to save her.
As that thought crosses her mind, so does a flash of inspiration.
If she can utilize the experiments taking place in this facility and transfer
her sister's soul into her own body, she might yet be saved.
But the younger sister instantly rejects this idea.
Only one soul can exist in a body.
If her sister's soul is transferred, the woman will cease to exist.
"Also," continues the girl weakly, "they haven't even made a successful transfer yet.
If we try it, we'll probably both end up dead."
And yet, the woman cares not; she gently places her hand on the tank and nods once.
"But Sis... Why would you⁠...?"
"Because you are my sun," whispers the woman.
After losing their parents, the sisters supported each other through thick and thin.
The elder sacrificed her own happiness to watch after the
younger like a mother—a choice many others found pitiable.
And yet, the woman knows that without her sister,
she would have surrendered to the dark long ago.
Her sister is her entire reason for living.
"Let me do this, Sis. Please."
For the woman knows this above all else:
Sacrificing her own life is an acceptable price to save the person she holds most dear. ## Story 3 ![bg0130145.png](/uploads/bg0130145_8e02e36756.png) A strange building stands in the middle of a kingdom military compound.
The woman snuck inside only to find her beloved little sister suspended in a tank.
The girl has been kept alive so she might be used as a subject for kingdom experiments.
"Use my body," pleads the woman. "Please."
If her little sister were to be removed from the tank, she would perish within the day.
So the woman devises a plan.
The kingdom has been conducting inhuman experiments⁠:
moving souls into bodies that are not their own.
She seeks to use this technology to bring her sister's soul into herself.
Yet two souls cannot exist in one body. If she accepts her sister,
the woman will disappear. She knows this.
And yet, she would rather die than abandon her again.
"Please say yes," the woman pleads quietly. "Please."
The light on the machine shifts, changing its hue.
A bowl-shaped apparatus the size of a human skull appears.
Numerous wires stretch from the device, connecting it to the tank.
Giving in to her elder sister's persistence, the younger has finally opened the input to her mind.
"I might be able to use this to put my soul into your body," says the sister.
"But once I do, you will—"
"I know," says the woman.
"I know. And it's fine."
The woman operates the apparatus according to her sister's instructions,
which are delivered in a quivering voice.
She places it atop her head and activates the transfer program.
Slowly, her consciousness begins to fade.
"Leave the rest to me," says the younger sister.
Her sister's voice is fleeting, but kind.
I would give my everything for her, thinks the woman as she slowly slips into the dark.
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.........
............
As consciousness returns to the woman, she snaps into a seated position.
Cautious, she scans her surroundings.
"I'm..."
What she sees before her is not the strange room filled with tanks. Instead,
she is in her forest home—the selfsame one the kingdom put to the torch.
It looks just as it did during the days she would go hunting with her sister.
Am I dead?, the woman wonders. Is this the afterlife?
"Hey, Sis."
A voice from behind sends a shiver down her spine.
It is a real voice—one without the tinny quality that comes from a speaker.
This can't be happening.
For as many times as she has imagined their reunion, it was never like this.
She turns around and sees her sister standing before her, her hair as dark as night.
She looks just as she did before the sorting.
And her body is unmodified.
"I'm dead," says the woman. "Right?"
By transferring her sister's soul into her body, her very existence should have vanished. And yet...
"No. Not yet. This is the inside of your consciousness. My soul's trying to make its way into your body."
Not dead, then. Hanging on. Sharing a few final moments before surrendering herself utterly.
The woman grasps tight to whatever she can of this miraculous moment.
"I'm so glad you're alive," the woman says.
"Yeah."
"Now use my body and get out of that building."
"Okay."
The woman doesn't care what happens so long as her sister can escape.
And yet, the girl's responses are...troubling.
At first, the woman figures she's just bewildered by the strange situation,
but that thought quickly shakes free.
"I'm okay," says the woman. "Don't worry about me."
She hopes comforting her sister in this way will ease her troubled look.
But her expression only clouds further.
"Is there something you want to tell me?" asks the woman.
Her sister slowly nods.
"The girl you were talking to earlier? That was me...and yet it wasn't.
I'm beingcontrolled—and I'm acting to prioritize my own survival as a weapon."
Weapon. Controlled. My own survival.
The words instantly cause ripples through the woman's heart.
The girl goes on to tell her that she was forced to speak and act as she
did so the weapon part of her—the sorted part—could claim her sister's body.
The code incorporated into that side of her prioritizes survival above all else—including her will.
Her sister mentioned the kingdom brainwashing test subjects
before attempting to move their souls into compatible bodies.
In that moment, the woman realizes her sister has fallen under their sway.
All she said earlier—every word—was naught but a way for her to use the woman for her own survival.
"But I can think straight here," says the girl.
"For just this small moment, I can say what I really think."
Grief passes across her face, a ripple in a pond.
"I don't want this," continues the girl. "Because if I come back to life..."
She doesn't want to sacrifice her older sister in order to survive.
And yet, there is another reason why she cannot come back.
For if the girl's soul does find a new home, it means the kingdom's
experiment is a success—and that will only lead them to increase the sorting.
The casualties from such an event would be unspeakable.
For two sisters who have been torn apart by war, such a thing cannot come to pass.
"So kill me, Sis. Kill me and burn this horrible place to the ground."
Does she bring her little sister back to life?
Or does she sacrifice her to stop the kingdom?
The choice is extreme. Agonizing. Impossible.
The woman cannot stand seeing her sister beg for death.
She cannot lose her again.
And yet, she has already made up her mind.
Memories flash before her eyes. Running across fields.
Dashing through forests. Carefree days spent in the love and comfort of each other.
She will never lose her sister. She cannot.
For she is her other half—a thing more precious than her own self.
With this thought in her mind, she wraps the smaller girl with ebon hair into a fearsome embrace. ## Story 4 ![bg0130150.png](/uploads/bg0130150_a742b5f1d0.png) A kingdom research facility stands proud.
Inside, a woman reunited with her sister—a girl trapped in a
tank and subjected to horrible experiments.
The woman thought to transfer her sister's soul into her
own body in order to save her.
She cared not that the process would result in her own death.
But when they reunite in the realm of subconsciousness,
the younger pleads for her to do otherwise.
"Kill me," she says. "Destroy the facility. Prevent the fires of war from spreading.
And kill every last kingdom soldier you can find."
With that, the woman bids farewell to her sister and her memory,
and leaves the subconscious world behind.
When she awakens, she finds herself in the middle of a long room lined with tanks.
It resembles little more than a dim and dusty graveyard.
She distractedly wipes away the tears streaming down her cheeks and takes blade in hand.
Her mission is to lay her sister to eternal rest.
And to do so, she must destroy the facility and everything in it.
It is a mission she wants desperately to refuse.
But she cannot permit the tragedy bestowed upon her family to visit anyone else.
"Thanks, Sis..."
Her sister's last words—and the sensation of their final
embrace—etch themselves on the woman's heart.
These things are strands of a gossamer web
that will lead her free of the hell which is to come.
"Why, Sis?! Why!?"
A voice from the speaker cuts off her thoughts.
It comes from the tank where her sister floats.
"I thought you were going to save me!"
But the woman knows why she says these things.
For she has heard her sister's true voice within her subconsciousness.
These are false words spoken on behalf of the kingdom.
The woman knows this. She knows it.
And yet, her heart quivers all the same.
Her sister says something else, then—a plea to be kept safe as she always has been.
The woman presses both of her hands to her ears so she cannot hear.
Then she quietly pierces the tank with her blade.
"Thank you..."
The girl's final words are not electronic. Not tainted.
They reach the woman's heart in their purest state.
Or at least, she feels it to be so.
"I'm sorry," whispers the woman.
Her face is frozen. Ice. But the apology is so, so real.
With the destruction of the first tank, the others flash a sympathetic red as an alarm begins to wail.
The quiet space is soon filled with kingdom soldiers.
They had been lying in wait until the younger sister's soul was successfully transferred.
But now that it has failed, there is no reason for secrecy.
The prosthetic woman uses every ounce of her power to fight them,
knowing it will all be for naught should she lose.
One by one, she strikes them down.
With each body that falls, pieces of the complicated feelings regarding her actions begin to break away.
As the lives of her enemies are snuffed out, so too is her sadness and pain.
And once the final soldier is no more, all that remains is rage.
The facility soon finds itself engulfed in those flames.
Researchers desperately attempt to flee for their lives,
dancing merry jigs of death as fire clings to their clothes.
It is unlikely the sorting technology will improve
now—at least until another attempts to revive the research.
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Days after the woman fled the facility with her sister's
body cradled in her arms, she finally arrives home.
Her mother. Her father. Her sister. All are gone now. All are slain.
She is all that remains.
The dirt that lies atop her sister's freshly buried body is
darker than the rest of the surrounding earth.
Her mother's hairpin gently sways in the wind atop the grave.
As the prosthetic woman sits beside her slumbering sister, she begins to speak.
"You don't have to watch over me."
The path she will embark upon is one stained with
blood—and something she would rather her sister not see.
"So just rest now. Okay?"
Until that moment, the woman has worn a calm expression.
But when she finishes speaking, she unleashes a wail that startles birds into flight.
It is a sound borne not of grief, but of fury.
And as it echoes and vanishes around her, she makes a vow.
She will bury all her love along with her sister. All her joy. All her heart.
The only thing she will take with her is the anger she needs to destroy the kingdom.
She looks up and lets small droplets fall on her cheeks.
The sky is shedding the tears which she cannot.
The earth covering the fresh grave begins to blend with the soil around it,
until it is impossible to tell anything new is even there.
By the time the rain stops, the woman is gone.
And she will not return until her rage has been satisfied.

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